


i've never been with anyone in the way i've been with you

by juggyjones



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Past Archie Andrews/Veronica Lodge, Past Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones, Secret Relationship, bughead break up, minor Jughead Jones/Veronica Lodge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 19:43:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14837999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggyjones/pseuds/juggyjones
Summary: It takes Archie and Betty a long time to fall in love – but when they do, it takes them even longer to admit it.





	i've never been with anyone in the way i've been with you

The first time he notices something is when she breaks up with Jughead. He sees her at the window, smiling in a way Betty Cooper doesn’t, and pointing at her phone. 

Archie’s phone is on his bed. He checks it, sees two missed calls and a text message from half an hour ago. 

**Betty: Jughead and I broke up**

He calls her. 

 _“Hi,”_  she says. It’s soft and quiet and he doesn’t think she’s particularly sad, but words are taking their time to leave her lips.  _“You got the text?”_

“I did.” Archie walks up to the window so he’s standing at it, looking right across into her room, where her posture mimics his. “How are you holding up?”

_“I think I’m good.”_

“Good.” He smiles at her. “Do you want to come over and talk about it?”

_“I don’t want to bother.”_

He closes his eyes and says, “Betty.” 

She agrees to come as soon as she’s finished with her homework. They end the call and he watches her wave at him and go to her desk, out of his sight. That’s when he plops down on his bed, thinking about the way he said her name. 

It was soft, in the way morning rays wake him by painting his room a soft orange. But they tell him to wake up, to start his day, to do something – just the way his saying her name was meant to make her come over. 

Not an order; a plea. 

Her name rolls off his tongue differently every time he tries it, but he can’t replicate the one time he thinks it mattered. Maybe it was because he was seeing her on the other side, knowing that she needs him the way he needed her when he and Veronica broke up. 

It’s not a band-aid to help heal the wound. It’s not bitter alcohol burning in it and cauterizing it. It’s not stitches that keep him from falling apart. 

For him, Betty is the soft medicine that comes around the wound, helping the skin heal itself on his own. She pushes him forward and helps him heal himself without depending on someone else. 

She’s soft smiles and warm eyes, soft touches and warm words. 

That’s how it felt to say her name – only this time, he was her medicine.

He doesn’t know if she noticed.

When she finally comes, half an hour later, she says it was mutual. She’s not heartbroken, but it was a long relationship and she still loves Jughead – it’s just not working out anymore. 

She looks like she just needs to let it out of her system, so that’s what Archie lets her do. She’s lying on his bed, pouring her heart out as the sun begins to fall, and he’s sitting on his chair and watching her, listening intently. 

He watches her lips move and her tongue lick them when they start drying out. He watches her hair spread across his sheets and the curves of her body sinking into the mattress. He is amazed by how natural the sight is – as if he’s seen it a thousand times. 

He thinks about touching her. Not sexually, not for one moment; touching her lips, wondering if they’re as soft as they look. Running a hand through his hair and placing butterfly kisses on the side of her neck. Trailing down her nose with the tip of his finger and the kissing it. 

He thinks about having her. 

When she looks at him, eyes lighter than they were before and a smile creeping in the corners of her lips, Archie realizes he wants to keep her safe. And happy. And he’ll do whatever it takes to achieve that; hurt whoever hurts her. 

“Thanks, Archie.”

He doesn’t notice it, but she says his name in the same way.

 

* * *

 

He spends the next month knowing nothing is the same. He doesn’t know if he wants to be with her or aches for her constant presence in his life, soft and harmless and like medicine for an open wound. 

Except there’s no wound this time. Or maybe, he’s been one as a whole this entire time. 

Betty comes over because he’s waiting to hear from the music academy down in New York. She’s already heard from NYU and she’s accepted, and Archie thinks the universe is trying to tell them something.

He doesn’t voice it out loud, of course. He keeps the thought buried deep in his heart, fluttering at the tip of his tongue when he says her name. 

Part of him is worried because this could launch his music career. He doesn’t care much about football, not anymore, but music has still remained his number one priority. That, and Betty. 

So when he calls her and she realizes the state he’s in, she comes over only seconds later. He welcomes her lying on his bed with face buried in a pillow, wallowing in anxiety and self-pity. 

Betty sits next to him. Places a hand on his back, rubbing it softly. 

He can’t see her, but he knows she’s smiling. 

“Arch,” she says. “Look at me.”

He doesn’t. He can’t. “No.”

“Archie.”

She says it the way he said it a month ago. Softly and carelessly, caressing the vowels like they’re made of satin. 

He turns to face her, props himself up against the wall, and looks at her. 

“Talk to me,” she says.

He does. He tells her everything about how worried he is and she listens, without saying a word. She’s holding his hand, he notices in the middle of his monologue, but neither pays attention to that. 

When he comes to the part of the possibility of not being able to afford the Academy, Betty sits next to him and curls into his chest. He stumbles on his words—just for a short breath—and puts an arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer. 

No amount of close will be close enough when they’ve got the emotional barrier between them. 

So he breaks it. He stops talking and looks at her. 

For all his life, he thought of Betty as someone who’s going to be by his side until one of them dies. He pictured her at his wedding, their kids playing together, double dates when they’re middle-aged and watching their kids go to college, drinking themselves to sleep because they’re old now. 

There has never been a possibility of Archie’s future without Betty in it. 

Somehow, he never really considered that she might be the one he’s getting married to and that double dates aren’t double. That they don’t drink when their kid goes to college, instead they drive him to where he’s staying and reminisce about old times, when that was them. 

That’s the future he’s considering now. And with her body pressed into his, with no lust or desire except a form of longing he can’t put in words, he thinks that’s the only future that ever felt real. 

So he kisses her. Softly, carefully, like he’s saying her name for the first time. 

She kisses him back. 

“Betty,” he says, his voice dripping with emotion, the adoration he holds for her. 

She touches his lips with her finger, parting them slightly before she kisses him again and it’s what Archie thinks kissing an angel would be like. 

Betty looks at him and smiles. “I know.”


End file.
